Your Career And Your Family … Which One Comes First ?

He’s fifteen. At that tender age, he has already assumed the huge responsibility of being a mother and a father to three kids. He bathes, feeds, takes care of them and takes them to school. He also teaches them “what he knows.”

Before you begin to wonder if he is an hermaphrodite, let me quickly tell you that this little father-mother is just a house help !!! This is a real life story and not fiction. Similar stories are found everywhere, except in my home 🙂

There is one bad thing about making money – it makes you forget that there are some things it cannot buy. A child from a very wealthy home once said to me out of frustration, “I have everything, except parental love.” Her parents are never around. They leave very early for work and come back very late at night. Even when they are around, it’s still work-work-work !!! For her, everything she knows comes from outsiders. Mummy or daddy have no time to teach her anything. Fun? That is a different issue entirely – no outings as a family, no sitting down and watching TV together, no parent-child playing together and apparently, no sign of having parents !

Between couples, the inability of a man or woman to maintain a good balance between work and the family has led to strained relationships/marriages and divorce in extreme cases. Some cases of staying out late into the nights, eating out and adultery are also traceable to the inability to strike a balance between giving your career the best attention it deserves and at the same time, not making one’s family to be deprived of care, love, and attention.

Hey! Where ever we go, we still need to go back home. So, it is compulsory that in all that we do, the home-front is given a well-deserved attention, love, concern and consideration.

A man’s regular presence in the house cannot be over emphasised. His presence provides a psychological security for his family, plays a major role in discipline, reduces or eliminates the tendency towards adultery, reduces the tendency for the children to “learn” from outside the family and keeps the family bond very strong. It also teaches the male children how to be a good family man in future. This, I learnt from my late dad 🙂 For me, the best thing about closing time at work is that not too long I would be with my family. It is the best place to unwind after a hard day’s work 🙂 Even when I have to go and unwind after work, I go with my lovely family, who would not even spare my phone lines as soon as it is time for me to be at home and I am not there.

For a woman, not being able to strike a good balance between your career and your family can be very disastrous. You unavoidably put bad ideas into the head of your husband; widen the gap between you and your children/husband; inadvertently teach your daughter how to arrange her priorities when she gets married; expose your children to the high risks involved in “abandoning” children to house helps; and generally fail as a mother and wife, in the real sense of it!!!

My late mum’s friend’s marriage almost hit the rocks when the lady resigned from the public service for a very lucrative bank job. The huge salary she got replaced the happy family she once had. Having a good time with her family stopped. Cooking for the family stopped. Playing with the children stopped. Having time for her husband stopped. In fact, the female house help “took over” the house. She was lucky the maid did not take over her husband too 🙂 When she noticed that her marriage and family were heading towards a collapse, she had to make a quick and hard decision – her career or her family? She chose her family !!!

Michael M.

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